I could use some advice in regards to the layout and the physically installing of a wired LAN system. One concept that’ll be a major factor in this is what I’ll refer to as the ‘Wife Factor’: very simply … none of the Ethernet wire can be visible (except of course at the very end of each cable where I can have a foot or 2 of wire poking out of the wall ready to be attached to a device).
Ok … where I’m at now … I’m in a 2 story ranch type style house. Ethernet wise … everything is currently in the basement … in what I’ll refer to as my ‘man cave’. By previous agreement … very happy to say that the wife factor does not apply here. An exception to this is I do have 1 ethernet cable running upstairs to service what I’m using as an office. Recent covid events have forced me into on-line teaching using TEAMS etc. and wifi was not able to keep up … that’s what started this whole little project … anyway since this wire allows me to have an income I’ve been granted limited-time immunity (till the end of the school year) from the ‘wife factor … for this one wire only.
In the cave … I have a primary router connected to a secondary router (very recently configured to behave just the way I want). This gives me 6 wired LAN ports … one of these is servicing the office upstairs … so 5 free to play with. I can connect laptops, uhd blueray players etc. to any of these ports and get pretty decent file transfer rates (600 Mbps or so). So … now I can go ahead and set up a PLEX server based movie etc. system (earlier attempts via wifi failed miserably at this) … something I’ve been thinking about for a while now … so that’s great!
The plan of course is to extend the wired LAN to the 2nd floor. Here the wife factor comes very much into play and should under no circumstances be underestimated lol. And here is where I could use some advice. It’s only been in the last week or so that I’ve any experience or knowledge about routers, networking etc. so if some of my terms or thinking are muddled or whatever … cut me a bit of slack but definitely point out to me where I’m wrong.
Ok on the planning layout end of 2nd floor extending … I see 2 ways of proceeding:
1/ kind of a ‘brute force’ approach … simply attach an 8 or 12 port switch to the primary router and run separate wires to every devise location. This is ok but … it means running about 7 or 8 wires from the cave up to the 2nd floor … because of where there is a good place to accomplish that (utility, furnace room with no ceiling) means running these wires about I/2 the length of the house in the basement … feathering the wires up to the 2nd floor and then running back through various lengths of the house (some would have to come back the entire length of the house). Doable for sure (and I do have a big ass spool of wire to play with) but kinda … clunky.
2/ use a switch in the cave but just take 1 wire from it (or from the primary router) … run it same way mentioned above and … at the 2nd floor level … attach it to a 2nd switch (there is a quite centrally located closet that would be a good location for this switch and … since it’s my closet would be one the very few spots immune to the ‘wife factor’. All second floor devices (including the 2nd router?) could be connected to this switch with relatively short lengths of cable. I’m not sure though … would introducing this switch to switch connection have an adverse effect on file transfer speed?
Any thoughts on these 2 methods would be much appreciated. Or … there may an entirely other, better way to layout everything?
Ok … thinking of the runs of wire:
As mentioned … no ‘wife factor’ worries in the cave … I want it neat and tidy and out of the way of course but invisible … I’m not too worried about that. I see no problems with the cave cables. The 2nd floor cables however are very much subject to the ‘wife factor’ … that’s her domain and she guards it ruthlessly. I do however have an excellent ‘window of opportunity’ approaching. In the late spring, my wife wants to some remodeling, redecorating, painting etc. and one of the things she wants (music to my ears) is … those wall to ceiling corner crown moldings. They don’t actually go right into the corner … glue or nail one edge to the wall … the other edge to the ceiling and you have a nice little cavity at the wall/ceiling corner for the Ethernet cable … up above all the door frames … perfect I reckon. All the interior walls are standard 2X4 with ½ inch drywall on each side. To get through a wall to another room at that height would mean drilling through the top plate …so 3 ½ of wood … a speed bore bit or something would handle that ok … right? Since I’m running cable only (no connector) … ¼ or 5/16 inch would probably be plenty?
Another few things I can’t quite figure is … ok, I’ve got my cable at the right spot at the top of the wall. Now I want to come down into the hollow cavity of the wall to the right vertical height. How would I get a hole from the side of the top plate down into the wall cavity … I mean a drill wouldn’t work because you couldn’t get the right angle on it without hitting the ceiling with the back of the drill? Even banging away with a chisel would be problematic. Can anyone give me a suggestion here? I’d like to avoid damaging the drywall below where the crown molding would cover if possible. Also … thinking of the wall where the cable is at the right height to be plugged to devices … there seem to be wall plates with female sockets built into them … there’s also wall plates with a little round hole in them for the wire to come through … then you crimp a standard connector on the wire … which of those methods would be best? I guess … thinking of the ‘wife factor’ the wall plates with the built in female connectors would be the tidiest.
Okay, as far as the wiring. If your goal is to have 1Gbps speeds everywhere, then running cables is your best long term solution. However, if you don't need 1Gbps everywhere, there are other easier solutions, primarily powerline adapters and moca adapters.
Powerlines are dead simple to use--plug into wall, plug ethernet into powerline--done. Their drawback is speed, where they will at best break the 100Mbps mark--great for streaming (teams, etc), but not for file transfers.
Moca is almost as dead simple as powerlines, but use coax cables instead. But there's a catch and a benefit--the catch is that your cable wiring needs to be a certain way (and you can fix this if it isn't), and the benefit is 1Gbps speed--that's right--full gigabit.
Generally powerlines are the easiest to implement but moca's small investment in checking the wiring pays off with 10x the performance.
Okay, so now onto wiring things. The disadvantage of having a single run to the basement where the man cave and servers are is that you only have a 1Gbps link between the 2nd floor and the basement. And this generally isn't a problem unless 2x things from the 2nd floor can normally hit 600Mbps when connecting to the basement individually try to connect at the same time. Now, you've got 2x devices trying to get 600Mbps of bandwidth through a 1Gbps (1000Mbps) link. Get it? Like having 2x toilets on the 2nd floor flush at the same time and you only have enough sewer pipe for one at a time...actually eww that's a bad mental picture, but it does immediately reveal what happens--you get things backing up on you.
As far as terminating the wiring (that's the technical for the wall jacks/ends), you will want to use what are known as 'keystones'. These will create a jack on the end of a cable. And then these keystones typically fit into plates that accept them. Keep in mind every manufacturer makes different keystones and plates and some will work together and some will not.
So one thing for sure--if you're going to run cables and you're going to have nice wall jacks--you can put up to 6x cables in one wall plate, so run more than one run to places you think you may have a wire that does not work or may need a second jack. We did this at my parent's house in 1995--best decision ever since people that wire this stuff for a living still don't know how to properly terminate ethernet, even 25 years later, and we had at least one run work.
As far as how do you get the jacks in the wall--that's the really tough part. If you really, really want a wall jack like a power outlet, you will need to open a hole in your wall and then go backwards up the wall with what is known as a 'fishing line', which is really a stiff metal wire on a reel or fibreglass rods that you can attach a cable to and then push to where you want it to be. Honestly, this is where you are better off with wireless as you can easily hide the wiring for a ceiling mount access point very easily.
I'm sure I missed answering some of your questions so post back.
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